This one relates to Chapter 9 of the original, the title of which was itself a play on "Running in heels". So by now we're front-running in men's shoes as well. Enjoy! And if you're bored afterwards don't forget A Bee in her Bonnet awaits you on this same excellent website.
Yep, what do you know, flipping thing didn't even work. Typical.
'Right, well there's a bug in here,' Will sighed as he wheeled his chair back, vaguely aware of bumping into something soft behind it, probably some overhanging coat or something.
The pet quant had another of her voice breaks as she squeaked that there wasn't a bug but seriously, what a pointless effing waste of his effing time: how long had she been on at him to look at this thing? Did she think she could have got it bloody working in that time? They had to strike on this bloody list in, what, eight minutes' time?
OK, well this was only Excel. Even he, a mere trader, could do Excel. Better than her, evidently, judging by this useless piece of nonsense. What did she have? Almost a hundred grand loss in a couple of minutes? He started re-calculating each line of the PnL, which she took as some completely unprovoked insult to her mighty intelligence but tough shit. What did she have: hundred and twenty grand? Get over yourself, woman.
And whatever you do, never get your pretty hands anywhere near one of my trades.
As he checked formulas and prices the minutes ticked away, the way minutes and hours compress into nano-seconds on market disaster days. Five minutes before the strike he crossed his arms and watched his number, and hers, cross the two hundred grand line together. Like synchronised divers, but with lead belts on. For fuck's sake how hard could it be to not fuck this up? How many PnL's had he calculated in his life? If this big number was correct, and all those little numbers she'd formatted red-for-losses were all correct too, then the only rational explanation was…
The pest had to interrupt just as he got it, naturally, but he shut her up and got Neil onto Bloomers to check on the largest two names in the list. Being a pest she had to make a point of taking the next two before he asked her to so yeah, big deal, she'd worked it out. Whoop-dee-doo: get on with it, then.
In this unpleasant manner they kept themselves busy, Will calling out names, Neil and the pest taking turns saying Rheinland, boss, Rheinland, boss, Rheinland (no boss) – the latter in that phoney French voice of hers. Was it him, or was she even more grating than usual?
Strike time came and he had to duck left to dodge her chest as she made a grab for his mouse. Technically Neil's mouse, whatever. She clicked on some button and the red little lead-divers stopped their synchronised diving and a summary report appeared on a new sheet.
Neat.
All red font – for losses. Will wheeled himself a little further away from the pet quant's shirt and put his eyes where they' be safest, on her hand. This was how he realised what his chair had bumped into earlier.
He stood up, and asked Neil to put him through to Rheinland in 3.11.
x
The fantastic thing about trading, Will thought, not for the first time, was its unique ability to eclipse completely, if sometimes too briefly, even the biggest most monumental cock ups in the rest of your life.
Now, as he walked the few steps to the meeting room, Will savoured such an occasion: without the urgency of calling Rheinland, right now he would have been dwelling on how marvellous the quant's spreadsheet was, how soon, how prettily and how loudly it had screamed at him that something was wrong.
Except not with her, but with the trade.
He'd have had time to dwell on how, despite the number of times Raj had assured him the woman was some sort of wizz, instead of trusting her work he'd decided not only to check it through, but also to smash her beautiful, precious fingers in the bargain. So now the only part of her anatomy he'd been almost comfortable looking at so far, would become a reminder of what a monumental twat he'd just made of himself.
Again.
Thankfully then, for now, Trading called on him to call Rheinland, so call Rheinland he did, and then he called Neil and the quant to join him in 3.11, and stood up when she came into the room, and apologised.
Properly.
You'd think it wouldn't have killed her to accept his apology for what it was, but being the mighty Pet Quant she pinched her lips instead, waved that poor injured finger at him saying that she'd live, and looked at him as if he were mad. You just couldn't win with that woman. And then she hid her sore hand away inside the other on her lap, and asked all the obvious questions about the money and the line and made some joke about the portfolio managers being a lazy bunch. Which, obviously, they were, but still, it didn't work. Her trying to be one of the guys was never going to work. Not in a million years, nothing she could do about it, not with those hands, or with that voice or with…
With that fucking brain of hers. Yep, it wasn't as if Raj hadn't tried to warn him: this hot French weirdo was smarter than the rest of his desk put together, and certainly smarter than him by a country mile - or ten. How did you even get real-time data to play in Excel? How had she been squirrelling away all that data about the desk's trades, going back years? How much did she know about his trades, that he never would? And what the fuck would they have done without her and her spreadsheet today? Neil would have struck that trade and put his loss down to bad luck, none the wiser.
So yes, now, finally, Will understood what else the quant was a star-performer at, other than setting his pulse racing. She sure still sucked at carrying coffees, judging by all the rings on her desk and notepad by the end of a typical day. But right now there wasn't anyone else around this building, who could tell him the next thing he needed to know: how long Rheinland had been front-running them for.
Only one thing for it then: Will prepared himself for the kind of bartering where the other side has you over a barrel, and you both know it. Or rather he tried to prepare himself for it, and thought he had. He'd crossed his arms, because somehow closing his own chest off usually helped distract him from hers. And he'd had no trouble working himself into an internal fury – in this case, fury at his own stupidity because hell, what the fuck was he thinking, messing with a woman with those kinds of skills? And in front of Raj too…
But, as it turned out, nothing could have prepared him for what she put him through. For that cocky fuck-off smile she gave him while she faked, very badly, surprise at his newfound interest in her off-site numbers. And then, the pest, when he checked that she did have the numbers they needed, she blew, she actually blew on her finger, right in his face, the fucking tease, while still smiling her own pretty face off at him! Did she have any idea what that did to a guy? Any fucking idea?
He gave in, stood up and walked them back to the desk before he had time to act on any of the many, colourful and highly non-collegial thoughts still racing through his stupid head. She carried on teasing him, of course, while they trawled through older Rheinland trades. But at least he didn't have to look at her now. At first it was all he could do to stay with the numbers, instead of picturing her blowing on that poor lovely finger of hers. But then God fucking bless trading, the urgency of ploughing the true depths of Rheinland's iniquity took over again, and he and the quant were just looking at trades, side by side, list by list, until they knew that they were OK, and thank God for that.
Or rather thank God for creating for the witch quant, and thank the witch quant for everything else.
x
Outside trading, running was the best way Will knew of forgetting about life's more monumental cock ups. He needed a run now, and a long, hard, fast one. He was rummaging under his desk for his trainers when she said it, in that same little French voice which, not a minute ago, had been uttering sweet nothings like "two hundred and fifty one thousand six hundred and seventy three". Now someone barked "Peel Hunt" and she said:
'Is that cockney rhyming for something?', and he heard that very rare thing on any trading desk: half a second's complete silence.
He knew he was in real trouble the moment he heard them laugh, and then her. From where he was her laugh sounded childish, high pitched like her voice, and Will felt his own face start to smile. He thought of staying down here at first, hiding under the desk, so he wouldn't have to let her see him smile at her like this, out in the open. Smiling slavishly at the sheer fucking knock-off amazingness of her. No point fighting it now: she'd got him. She'd won today fair and square. Where he was concerned she'd won most the days before that too, but today she'd won…
Like a man?
No, that didn't begin to do it justice either.
Instead of trying to work out exactly what word to put on the pet quant's mind-blowing, ball-busting wonderousness, Will decided to man back up, and got out from under his desk. He slapped her on the back, like one of the guys, and gave her a nickname, like one of the guys. It was a pretty crap and obvious nickname, but he couldn't exactly have gone with pet or pest or shit-hot-quant, so Lizzie would have to do.
Amazingly, for once she managed to take it the right way. She didn't snap at him or rub his face in it or even give him daggers. She did look a little surprised, but she carried on smiling that thousand-watt, devastating smile of hers, and he went away to run with Dean, and to be ribbed for the confounded, love-struck bloody fool that he'd turned into, he might as well admit it.
Admit it, and then get ribbed and run a good fast few miles, and then get over himself, for God's sake.
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